[556] Here comes in a curious incident, illustrating the extraordinary carelessness of the French Staff. Gazan was very anxious to get restored to him an artillery officer, a Captain Cheville, then a prisoner. As an exchange for him he sent into the British lines on the 20th, Captain Leith Hay, a captured British intelligence officer, who had been with the Army of the South for a month, and had witnessed the whole retreat, during which he had been freely in intercourse with General Maransin and many staff officers. On his release he was able to tell Wellington that the French were definitely halted, and expected to fight. Why exchange such a prisoner on such a day? See Leith Hay, ii. p. 190. Cf. Wellington Dispatches, x. p. 443, which corroborates Hay’s story.
[557] Jourdan, Mémoires, p. 475.
[558] Digeon had obstructed the bridges of Arriaga and Gamarra. The bridge of Villodas, below Gazan’s extreme right, had been partly barricaded. Not so Nanclares, Mendoza, and the bridge immediately below Tres Puentes.
[559] Diary of the 43rd officer, in Maxwell, ii. p. 40.
[560] There is a good account of the heroic death of Cadogan, a much-loved colonel of the 71st, in the diary of his quarter-master, William Gavin, of the same regiment. When aware that he was mortally hit, Cadogan refused to be moved from the field, and had himself propped up against two knapsacks, on a point from which his dying eyes could survey the whole field, and watched the fight to the bitter end.
[561] From Gazan’s report in the French Archives, written at St. Jean-Pied-du-Port in July—very much ex post facto. It was lent me by Mr. Fortescue, along with several other Vittorian documents.
[562] Diary of Cooke of the 43rd in Maxwell’s Peninsular Sketches, ii. 42.
[563] Graham’s Report, Wellington Supplementary Dispatches, viii. 7-8.
[564] Cooke, the 43rd officer in Maxwell’s Peninsular Sketches, ii. 44. The guns were undoubtedly the Horse Artillery battery on the high-road in front of Gazan’s centre.
[565] Of course, Cooke is understating the distance, which was about a quarter of a mile.